March 2012

March gave new insights on the different topics I am working on. Sometimes solving issues is asking the right questions, often the how questions, since they give somewhat more insight and instead of all doing myself it works best in teams with people, and especially multidisciplinary solutions are the nicest to see developing.

I also prepared an abstract for IALM 2012 in Istanbul at the AAFS-session there, as well as of course the EAFS 2012 that NFI organizes in The Hague. Many new things to develop, and it also works to have good students working on the different topics. March was my last vacation (next will be October), since I had time to read books as well as forensic literature. The casework is also giving some nice work and new ideas for R&D projects.

Also for ENFSI we are preparing the Forensic IT Working group meeting in Rome from 24-26 October 2012. It should be a good event. Also I saw that Europol will have the European Cybercrime Center, so this will be very nice to collaborate further on with the vice chair who is from Europol.

At some presentations I heard some discussions on the understanding of Bayesian conclusions by lawyers. The question that always arises if the conclusion that is logically correct is understood well by the readers of the reports. It takes some time to understand the conclusions as such for most people. However I see that people who are used to these kind of conclusions appear to understand them. However one of the most challenging issues is to have a calibration of conclusions among the forensic scientists and the different disciplines especially if it is subjective or a form of opinion, since often there is not enough statistical data to make it objective.

With some budget cuts to come, the main challenge is to find the most efficient and objective solutions and keep improving methods.

February 2012

This month was an excellent month, since we did not have an backlogs in casework, and I had four new students that started on different projects with doing new validation studies on camera identification, as well as aging and determining influence of firmware. Also the heart beat continues as such. I also had an evening at a crime scene for making reference video for a forensic comparison. Even the projects were going well, and all was correctly timed.

This month the American Academy of Forensic Sciences had its meeting in Atlanta from 18-25 February. It was a well attended meeting with over 4000 people attending. I was one of the organizers two workshops, one on 2D and 3D morphometrics for the Forensic Science Foundation and another workshop on innovations in multimedia forensics. Both went well, and I was also invited for a presentation at the Interdisciplinary Workshop. It appeared all workshops were sold out, and it is always nice to learn from questions that are asked.

As a Director of the Digital and Multimedia Section, I was also attending the Board of Director meeting in Monday and Saturday. Overall the meeting gave many new ideas, and it was for me good to see that collaboration between the different disciplines in forensic science goes very well. Also I was elected for the editorial board of the Journal of Forensic Science, which I also like very much because it has many disciplines in forensic science combined.

Picture taken at the Aquarium in Atlanta at Presidents Reception on Thursday

Later on the scientific session of our section also went very well, with lots of attendance on the forensic aspects of Facebook. I also have papers on video carving and on heart beat detection from videos.

January 2012

As always we have several things to do starting in January, and it appears I have some more time since I organized my work somewhat more efficiently. Currently I am working with five students on projects on camera identification with PRNU, detection of image manipulation, heart beat detection in video and quantization tables in JPEG. It works often very efficient to have validation studies on several topics, since often journal articles do not directly translate in forensic solutions which have been validated.

Also working on some casework on forensic multimedia, doing some review work and participating in project proposals. Of course since budget cuts are near, it is time to look for new solutions which make work more efficiently. Most often in my experience with some pressure on budgets the nicest solutions are developed, as long as there remains some time for doing research, which is often not easy since forensic casework is of course the most important.

As you might have seen, I also have sometimes guest posts for this blog, which also helps with seeing the contents. The latest is of Melanie Slaugh on mobile forensics. New developments in this field are very rapidly making old methods less useful, so it is important to do very much development in this field, and know forensic properties of new devices that are handled. 

December was a month for planning, and January we have to do the real work, also in private life, to make more balance. The good thing it started right with many days that I could take my bicycle to my work, as is usual in the Netherlands. Since I live near the beach, I can go with my bicycle through the dunes without any traffic jams, and it always helps to make new plans, and evaluate the day.

Issues with Cell Phone Forensics guest post by Melanie Slaugh

Cell phones don’t feel new, but in reality they are. With this newness comes rapid change, sometimes so

rapid that it is difficult for forensic scientists to keep up. Suspects use cell phones in a variety of crimes

and it is up to the forensic scientists to uncover their wrongdoings. But where do you start? What are

some problems that scientists come across?

1. Change- Change is the number one issue for forensic scientists to overcome. Even the cell phone

manufactures don’t always know how to retrieve information stored in new phones, so how can

scientists retrieve the information? Staying up-to-date on new cell phones is difficult, but not

impossible. As fast as they are produced, criminals come up with ways to abuse them. Strangely

enough, this can be useful for forensic scientists. Using online tips can allow scientists to easily

access information that would otherwise remain inaccessible.

2. Passwords – Password protection on cell phones are difficult to overcome, though not

impossible. Depending on the model, passwords can be bypassed in several ways.

3. Internet connection – The smarter cell phones get, the harder they are to delve into. Using an

internet connection instead of SMS or voice makes a forensic scientist’s job much harder.

4. Charge – Unlike computers, much of what is stored in a phones memory is dependent upon the

battery. When the electricity goes, so does the information. Depending on what information you

are looking for and how it is stored, battery or charger power is an important thing to think about.

5. SIM cards and removable media- SIM cards are the heart of a cell phone. They carry important

user information. Likewise, removable media, such as SD cards, can have lots of stored

information on them. It is important that forensic scientists have the proper equipment to read and

analyze the data.

6. Isolation – One thing that is often overlooked is the need to isolate the cell phone before

analyzing it. New text messages can overwrite old information, and connections to the internet

can invalidate old data. It is important to make sure the phone is isolated.

7. Security enhancements- Be especially careful when dealing with cell phones that have been

enhanced in some way. Some users have the ability to put in dead man’s switches, effectively

wiping the contents after an action or a period of time. Malware can also be loaded onto the

phone, placing your computer systems in danger.

There are many ore issues to watch out for, but these are the seven most common. Tracing cell phone data

is an arduous task, but it can be done. All it takes is a little research, a few tools, and a lot of patience.

Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and

writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for

internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the

consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at

slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.

(http://www.myispfinder.org/). 

Author Bio

Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.

December 2011

The month started at a very nice organized cybercrime conference in London http://defence.flemingeurope.com/cyber-security-summit/ also forensic aspects, and in depth on Scada and mobile systems.

In December I just had a week vacation in Gibraltar/Spain, since most often we go in vacation in winter and not in summer due to the climate in the Netherlands. It is very amazing to see that the airport runway is crossing the regular road.

Also I had to do internal examination and defend six reports with an external expert, and passed that. As each exam it always takes preparation time, however it good to have discussion about reports that have been written.

In the last week of this year I finally have some time to clean my desk, and preparing presentations which I have not covered already, as well as time time to finalize reports and reviews.

Conference in Chongqing

Bit Forensic conference in Chongqing

It was the second conference on forensic science, many good speakers from Europe, Australia, Asia and the North America, and very good to see that the government of Chongqing is investing very much in Forensic Science in collaboration with Universities in the United States.

November 2011

On forensic science many resources are available on the internet, one resource that I saw lately, is a good overview for people that are interested in a carreer in forensic science, http://www.bestforensicscienceschools.com/blog/ or http://www.forensicsciencetechnician.net/blog/ . The specialized universities that have course in forensic science, are numerous. One issue is however that there are many more students in forensic science, compared to the number of jobs available in the field. So often I have students that work on a project for a while, and then later on, of course they will do some other work, related to forensic science, or perhaps something completely different.

This is different for students that specialize in forensic ICT, and currently it is difficult to attract people to these jobs since not many students appear to chose ICT. Also the number of people that are requested in cybersecurity related areas are very many. We see that law enforcement in many countries is expanding in many countries, since we become aware that since many processes are linked to internet, with software and hardware that are mostly not very transparant in how they exactly work. Also we see that systems are updated regularly, due to the complexity of the software and hardware solutions, this remains also a challenge even if the source code is available. Reverse engineering is often work that takes a lot of patience and time, and with the development cycles of products become shorter, it means also that with new versions of software and hardware, only a part can be used again.

Malware developers are also changing there software often, and it is unknown how many systems have been infected, however the number of reports of botnets are huge and develop malware. So either way, there is a lot in forensic ICT to develop, investigate and finally learn from these in making systems more secure.